He further said that the "focus is on horizontal drilling" as rock formation has created challenges for vertical drilling.
Rescue work at the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand was virtually on hold Sunday as the agencies involved in the effort set themselves up for the next stage -- adopting multiple approaches to reach the 41 men trapped inside for a week.
'India has gone digital. They talk about the success of India's Chandrayaan mission but they cannot evacuate our people trapped for around a week'
The round-the-clock rescue work is being carried out by 165 personnel from multiple agencies, including the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, Border Roads Organisation and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the State Emergency Operation Centre said.
Officials said in the evening that a six-metre section of a steel pipe had been inserted into the bored passage. Another section was being welded into it. The plan is to insert 800 mm and 900 mm diameter pipes -- one after the other -- with the help of the giant drill till an escape passage is created for the workers stranded beyond the collapsed portion of the under-construction tunnel.
'The entire public needs to be evacuated immediately. Any day, the entire town can collapse.'
Kunal Kemmu's default mode performing comedy is overacting. When surrounded by much more competent theatre-trained actors, he falls consistently short. (In the past, this role would have been tailor-made for Govinda), observes Deepa Gahlot.
The vertical approach was one of the at least five options on which preparatory work had begun some days back, as anxiety mounted over the fate of the men trapped in the under-construction tunnel on Uttarakhand's Char Dham route.
Inching closer to their goal, rescuers have inserted wide pipes up to 45 metres through the rubble and will have to drill another around 12 metres to reach the 41 workers trapped inside the collapsed tunnel in Silkyara for 10 days, officials said Wednesday afternoon.
With questions being raised whether large-scale deaths in Uttarkhand could have been averted, the MeT department today said it had issued "timely" warnings of heavy rains and landslides while the state government claimed there was not enough prior indication of a "crisis of this magnitude".
The labourers have been trapped since Sunday morning when a part of the tunnel collapsed following a landslide.
Online travel portals are flooded with flight and train bookings, hotels teeming with requests for accommodation, and spiritual merchandise on e-commerce platforms is selling like hotcakes. As the consecration ceremony of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22 draws near, Indians across the country are putting their travelling boots on as the temple frenzy catches on. India's largest travel technology (traveltech) platform MakeMyTrip (MMT) has witnessed a substantial four-fold increase in bookings for Ayodhya compared to the previous year.
The 41 workers, who were rescued from Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel in a multi-agency rescue operation, kept their spirits up while trapped inside by taking morning walks and practising yoga, a rescued worker told Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Rescue workers pulled out all 41 workers trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel in a multi-agency rescue operation that hovered between hope and despair for 16 days.
Drilling at the collapsed Silkyara tunnel to rescue 41 men trapped inside for 12 days was halted again on Friday, officials said.
Here is the timeline of the disaster and the rescue efforts that followed.
Boring through the rubble of the collapsed Silkyara tunnel was put on hold again on Thursday apparently after cracks appeared in the platform on which the drilling machine rests, in a fresh hurdle to the rescue of 41 workers trapped inside for 11 days.
A helicopter carrying pilgrims from Guptkashi to Kedarnath crashed on Tuesday amid poor visibility and seven people on board are feared dead.
Yet another effort has been made by the state government for a scientific study with the help of satellite imagery of the crisis in the sinking town, Bhatt, who is associated with the Chipko Movement, said.
Lifting the ban on the yatra, a division bench of the court comprising Chief Justice R S Chauhan and Justice Alok Kumar Verma said the pilgrimage will start with restrictions like a daily limit on the number of devotees visiting the temples.
As most of the victims were charred beyond recognition after the bus caught fire in the early hours of Saturday, efforts were made to convince their families for mass cremation of the bodies instead of their DNA analysis, the official said.
The temple doors were opened at 8.50 am and the prime minister arrived just about half an hour later to offer prayers and perform a 'rudrabhishek'.
'These kinds of tunnels are not meant for the Himalayas.' 'Development should be good for all people and not where you make a tunnel and 40 people get trapped.'
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will undertake a yatra to Kedarnath on Thursday, trekking 18 km up into the Uttarkhand mountains to pay obeisance at the temple which faced the brunt of flash-floods two years ago and has since been spruced up.
A six-inch pipe has been laid at the Silkyara tunnel through which nutritious food and medicines could be supplied to the 41 labourers, trapped for over a week after parts of the under-construction structure collapsed following a landslide.
The ruling party appears set to form the government in Uttarakhand again, the first time in the state's 21-year history that a party will come to power for a second term in a row.
Snowfall in the higher reaches of Garhwal Himalayas and intermittent rains in lower areas affected the Char Dham yatra on Tuesday with the pilgrimage to the famous Kedarnath shrine suspended till May 16 and yatra to Badrinath halted temporarily.
The resumption of drilling with the auger machine is likely to speed up the rescue efforts.
"The new food supply pipeline has also made it easier to supply better food in larger quantities to them, which is a good thing. Otherwise the situation remains the same," said Negi, who spoke to his brother.
In a letter to the chief secretary, government of Uttarakhand, Union Power Secretary Alok Kumar said the land subsidence in Joshimath was a very old issue, dating back to 1976, and the construction of the 4x130 megawatt Tapovan Vishnugad project started only in 2006 by NTPC.
'My belief that I could protect the Himalayas was shattered.'
Dhami is often regarded as a protg of Maharashtra Governor and former Uttarakhand chief minister Bhagat Singh Koshyari, whom he served as an Officer on Special Duty and an adviser.
Travel companies, seeing massive cancellations, are now advising tourists to visit these destinations in August.
Badrinath-Kedarnath Temple Committee chief Mohan Prasad Thapliyal said the prime minister offered prayers at the temple for around 20 minutes and was given a greeting card made on a "bhojpatra" (birch leaves) by the temple's priests.
Devotees were not allowed to enter inside the temple premises when Modi was offering prayers.
'Cracks continue to appear in more and more houses.' 'We believe the government is not going to tell us the truth.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday dedicated to the nation the Mahakal Lok corridor at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh.
Projects would be bid out shortly while work on them would start after acquisition of 90 per cent land
He told reporters he did not ask for anything while praying as it is not his nature. "God has given us capacity to give and not demand," he said.
These human interventions in nature, along with climate change, are responsible for the disaster faced by the pilgrim town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand, which is sinking, he said.
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